The future of search

March 28th, 2008

Just got my beta invite through for Searchme. Wow!

Rather than giving you the usual text-only results, Searchme shows a snapshot of the page it’s found – making it easier for you to tell if it matches your requirements.

Moving between the snapshots is akin to using Apple’s Coverflow, as found in iTunes and it’s OS X Leopard operating system. That is to say, a breeze.

search-me-man.png Right now the database is relatively small; one billion pages as opposed to, say, Google’s 12 billion or so. But everybody has to start somewhere and the pages it stores will only grow over time.

The developers are swift to ensure we users know it’s a beta – and a real beta at that (not like GMail which has been in beta for 2 or 3 years and shows no signs of ever leaving).

I like the honesty: “our thing isn’t perfect, could you help us make it better please” is essentially what they’re saying. It means I’m helping to iron out the bugs, testing their web-based software against my own particular set-up and offering tips on how the next version can be even better.

Google has become the de facto search engine for most people and, as with Hoover, its name is in danger of passing from noun to verb. Whilst that might sound appealing, it has serious trademark issues – as any journalist who’s ever written Portakabin, Xerox or Kleenex when they meant “temporary, portable building”, “photocopy” or “tissue” will attest – but that doesn’t stop people doing it.

You say “I googled it”, not “I searched for it”. And when we say we ‘googled’ we don’t always mean we used Google. Or, at least, I don’t.

Is it even the best search engine any more? To answer that, we have to define ‘best’. Most results? Google probably wins on that score – but who wants to search through pages of chaff to find the one or two pages that are relevant to their precise needs.

Searchme may not be the best search engine yet – in terms of “finding the results I want for this particular search” – but their visual interface certainly makes their chances of succeeding, and toppling Google off its lofty perch, better than most

by Jennifer O'Grady and tagged , , ,
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Sociology and technology

March 13th, 2008

Yesterday I got a invited to a Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) session called “Surveying 2.0 Digital Technologies, Market Intelligence and Social Media.”

The event had a strong academic theme, with keynote speaker and professor of sociology at The University of York, Roger Burrows explaining how academia has woken up to the masses of data available in the commercial world, and is using it to evaluate and predict social trends.

Although Burrows believes that access to this data could revolutionise academia, he was keen to advise caution about the pooling of data from separate sources for commercial benefit.

(A ‘fun’ example of the scary future he envisaged can be seen on YouTube).

The recurring theme of the day was about privacy of information. As this Internet thing is not going to go away, issues over privacy represent the biggest threat to the development and implementation of technology.

Although every community site you join has T&Cs, there are few people who check them, fewer who object – and many who don’t really care.

Protecting yourself online is something that we all need to take as seriously as we do offline. The average fraudster can get just about everything they need from your Facebook site, so do take care what you share.

A more interesting question for practitioners comes from who owns the information you put on your social sites: you or the organisation that owns the site?

Deactivate your Facebook account, and they retain all your data about you. Your name. Your friends. Your pictures. Everything. Check the T&Cs if you don’t believe me.

The best part of the day was the parallel breakout session on the State of 2008 by the ever-so-funny double act of David Bird from MMU Business School and Mike Ryan of Idaho.

The big questions debated included:

  • Is 2008 the year for mobile advertising? (No – but we’re getting much closer).
  • Is our fast-paced technology-enabled life about to get faster? (Yes – but we could expect a slow down in 2011).
  • Does the Government already mash-up our personal data to keep an eye on us? (Er . . . ).

After the session, Bird and I shared a pint with two chaps from the newly-bought Multimap.

The world was put to rights, myths were exposed, truths were unleashed and the future speculated upon.

by katie and tagged , , , , , , , , ,
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Manchester’s First Girl Geek Dinner

March 13th, 2008

Ever thought IT was just for spotty boys in the back bedroom?

Then last night would have shattered that myth, as the region’s v. glam female ‘geek’ community gathered for the city’s first Manchester Girl Geek Dinner at the University of Manchester Incubator Company.

The ‘Girl Geek Dinners’ concept was founded in 2005 by Sarah Blow, an IT specialist fed up of feeling that existing industry events had nothing to offer women.

Events are now staged worldwide, with hundreds of women meeting to share ideas and find new ways to help each other over a glass of wine and great food.

In Manchester, a video welcome message from Blow kicked off the formal bit followed by a few words from event sponsors Sun Microsystems who were hoping that one of the developers in the crowd may be about to develop the next Google.

Top of the bill was Carolyn Bell, the inspirational head of IT operations for Auto Trader.

She kicked-off with the famous Harry Enfield sketch ‘Women Know Your Limits’ before documenting a career where she experienced male hostility at times – but demonstrates that anyone willing to put in hard work and effort will succeed.

The hot topic of debate was home working and the problems/opportunities this can create for women who want a family as well as a career in the fast-moving tech business.

Company at the table was great; I met Nina Meek, MD of 3D Design, freelance PR Debbie Catt, plus fellow BarCampers, Lucy Buykx of Eudomania and Linda Broughton of Old Broadcasting House, Leeds.

Big thank you to Valerie, Gemma and Claire for setting the event up. The wine, food, venue and company made for a fab event.

Geek-Up boys – you may have competition here!

by katie and tagged , , ,
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How to crash a web site

March 6th, 2008

The New York Magazine had a small outage recently, with its entire web site going down for a few hours. Not a system problem as such, more a content problem.

You see, this month’s magazine contains a photoshoot with Lindsay Lohan who, when she’s not popping into rehab, is a rather popular actress.

Miss Lohan’s usual fare, until recently, was of the Disney-esque variety. But her more recent roles, brushes with alcohol and this photoshoot are moving her FAR away from her former child star life.

Cause this photoshoot sees Ms Lohan recreating Marilyn Monroe‘s last ever photoshoot, even down to using the same photographer, Bert Stern.

Known as “The Last Photo Shoot” it featured not a lot of clothes and little more than a small piece of coloured gauze.

So, yes, to all intents and purposes, Ms Lohan was nude.

And if you want to make the web site of a major magazine publisher come crashing down, there’s nothing more-readily guaranteed than featuring a famous actress with her kit off.

We men are so predictable.

by Jennifer O'Grady and tagged , , ,
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Fascinating Facts

March 5th, 2008

Social media is much more than just a Facebook page (although it’s a good start), there are many different ways of sharing your message and listening to what your public are saying about you.

Here’s a few ‘Fascinating Facts’ I’d like to share with you:

  1. There are 113m active blogs being monitored by Technorati. 1.6 million new posts are added every day, the equivalent to 18 updates a second
  2. 663k people download the BBC Radio 1 Chris Moyles podcast every month. 300k less than the ‘Best of Today’ from BBC Radio 4
  3. Two years ago – YouTube didn’t exist. Now it features more that 76m videos and 2.8m user channels
  4. The UK has 8.5m active Facebook users, 5m MySpace users and 4m Bebo users. The fastest growing Facebook demographic is the over 25s – and Bebo is the biggest network in Ireland and rapidly growing in Scotland.
  5. Skype’s 276m registered users around the world have clocked up 100 billion minutes using free Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls since 2003
  6. Wikipedia has 7m entries and over 6.5m people registered as “wikipedians” (check out sister site wikinews for collaborative citizen journalism)
  7. Flickr has 2 billion images online and 3 – 5m pictures are added every day (although Facebook has 4.1 billion photos on its site!)
  8. Micro-blogging is on the up. It’s predicted that 1m people are following Twitter

Your public are talking about you all over the web. Come on and join the conversation.

by katie and tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
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BarCamp Manchester 2

March 3rd, 2008

For those unaware of the whole BarCamp phenomenon, it’s a different way of people getting together to share information in an open environment.

The content comes from the delegates who are tasked with giving talks/demos, running workshops etc. Time slots are released in the morning of the event, with anyone who wants to present making a mad dash to register. Then all the delegates choose which sessions they want to go to.

This was my second BarCamp; I went to Leeds in November and met with some genius type people who all ‘got’ what was going on in the online world and who are now firm friends. So I had high hopes for Manchester.

My favourite talks were by Tom Scott (Facebook apps in 30 mins!), Daniel Morris of the BBC who chattted through how they were using new technology to market to teens and Simon Wheatley who gave an intro to WordPress.

What I love about BarCamp, is that there’s something for everyone and the guys there break information down into plain English (meaning anyone can follow) and they want to share what they know.

In the spirit of giving something back, I presented on something I know about: “How to become famous” to demonstrate that although the online world is where we’re going, the traditional media is still a big part of where we are.

A great day – only marred by a small ankle twisting incident during the after-party – heels, red wine and curbs proving a bad combination (big thank you to Dan and Guy from Adaptavist for taking care of me).

Roll on the next one, I can’t wait!

by katie and tagged , , , , , , ,
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BarCamp Manchester

March 2nd, 2008

Phew! Yesterday was a whirlwind from which I’ve only just recovered. I’m sure Jen will write more about BarCamp later but I just wanted to write down a few quick thoughts.

  • Paul at Vagueware – top job, well done mate
  • Guy at Adaptavist – loved the debate (still think you’re wrong!) and “good work fellas” on sponsoring the after-conference shindig
  • Everybody who spoke – congratulations to you all, I obviously couldn’t get to see everybody’s talk but I heard good things about every single one of them
  • The people who took the photos – thanks for letting me see a picture of the back of my head, and the solar panel that appears to have got planted there. I will be taking radical steps in the haircut department shortly!

Rumours abound of a repeat to be held soon – I, for one, look forward to it.

BarCamp is a wonderful venue to meet people, listening to interesting talks, get involved in fascinating discussions, refresh your brain with new ideas, improve upon existing ideas and, most importantly, get a fuller picture of the technologies that are affecting the way we live and communicate.

by Jennifer O'Grady and tagged
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RIP Netscape

March 1st, 2008

Today (March 01 2008) is the end of an era, as the first real casualty of the browser wars passes into folklore, only to be spoken of when groups of geeks gather in darkened rooms.

Goodbye Netscape (1994-2008). We hardly knew you at all. But what a difference you made.

You blew our minds with version 3.

You confused us slightly with the whole Netscape/Netscape Communicator/Netscape Navigator thing.

And you got us wondering why the version after 4.8 was called 6.

Netscape changed the world. Not as much as Tim Berners-Lee did when he invented the web naturally but when Netscape was released, the meteoric rise of t’interweb began.

Around 1996/97, Netscape was the browser of choice for 90 per cent of the world’s web users; so the Company had a well-documented IPO, made a gazillionaire of founder Marc Andreessen, and then got bought by AOL for $4.2 billion and then… well, the writing was on the wall thanks to a little company from Seattle.

All had been fine with the world of Netscape until Microsoft did a volte face (“You know, there might be something in this web lark,” decided Bill Gates, no doubt stroking a white cat and issuing an evil laugh as he did so), licensed somebody else’s work (again), made a couple of false starts (ditto) and then did something that’s seen them in and out of US and European courts ever since – they bundled Internet Explorer with Windows.

Well, who was going to bother downloading Netscape (on dial-up) or hunting out a free CD when, well, there was a perfectly good browser built-in. Except Internet Explorer was – and remains – crap… but that’s another story for another day.

Soon enough the writing was on the wall, AOL cut their losses, ripped the bits out of Netscape they could use elsewhere and released the program’s source code, creating the Mozilla Foundation in the process.

Soon the Mozilla “suite” was launched (essentially Netscape Communicator with a new icon), which spun off the Phoenix project (later renamed Firebird and – finally – Firefox), and, due in the main to it coming with Windows, Internet Explorer took over the world (80 per cent market share give or take – and it’s still crap).

Netscape? Less than 1 per cent market share at the time of its demise.

What should you do today to celebrate the life of Netscape?

Well, if you’re a Windows user – I recommend one of two things. The first, slightly more expensive option: buy a Mac. You will thank me.

The cheaper option: go to www.getfirefox.com, stop using Internet Explorer and enjoy using the web again.

Netscape (1994-2008) is survived by a child, Firefox, and leaves behind approximately 14 users worldwide.

by Jennifer O'Grady and tagged , , , ,
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